John Schank jschank

Originally published in June 2008

When hiring Ruby on Rails programmers, knowing the right questions to ask during an interview was a real challenge for me at first. In 30 minutes or less, it's difficult to get a solid read on a candidate's skill set without looking at code they've previously written. And in the corporate/enterprise world, I often don't have access to their previous work.

To ensure we hired competent ruby developers at my last job, I created a list of 15 ruby questions -- a ruby measuring stick if you will -- to select the cream of the crop that walked through our doors.

What to expect

Candidates will typically give you a range of responses based on their experience and personality. So it's up to you to decide the correctness of their answer.

Managing `rubies` and `rvm` on OSX

Get rid of rvm

Unistall rvm ( if there exists one )

rm -rf ~/.rvm

Fresh install rvm

ANNOUNCEMENT

I have moved this over to the Tech Interview Cheat Sheet Repo and has been expanded and even has code challenges you can run and practice against!

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Remove MySQL completely

Open the Terminal
Use mysqldump to backup your databases
Check for MySQL processes with: ps -ax | grep mysql
Stop and kill any MySQL processes
Analyze MySQL on HomeBrew:
```
brew remove mysql
```

This is free and unencumbered software released into the public domain.

Anyone is free to copy, modify, publish, use, compile, sell, or distribute this software, either in source code form or as a compiled binary, for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial, and by any means.

In jurisdictions that recognize copyright laws, the author or authors of this software dedicate any and all copyright interest in the software to the public domain. We make this dedication for the benefit

	require 'yaml'
	require 'logger'
	require 'active_record'

	namespace :db do
	def create_database config
	options = {:charset => 'utf8', :collation => 'utf8_unicode_ci'}

	create_db = lambda do \|config\|
	ActiveRecord::Base.establish_connection config.merge('database' => nil)

	# Was asked how I keep my zshrc config sync'd between my computers with Dropbox

	# Add a new directory in your Dropbox (or use an existing one)
	mkdir -p ~/Dropbox/ohmyzsh

	# move existing file to Dropbox
	mv ~/.zshrc ~/Dropbox/ohmyzsh/zshrc

	# symlink file back to your local directory
	ln -s ~/Dropbox/ohmyzsh/zshrc ~/.zshrc

	#########################
	# .gitignore file for Xcode4 and Xcode5 Source projects
	#
	# Apple bugs, waiting for Apple to fix/respond:
	#
	# 15564624 - what does the xccheckout file in Xcode5 do? Where's the documentation?
	#
	# Version 2.6
	# For latest version, see: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/49478/git-ignore-file-for-xcode-projects
	#

	#!/bin/sh
	# Configure homebrew permissions to allow multiple users on MAC OSX.
	# Any user from the admin group will be able to manage the homebrew and cask installation on the machine.

	# allow admins to manage homebrew's local install directory
	chgrp -R admin /usr/local
	chmod -R g+w /usr/local

	# allow admins to homebrew's local cache of formulae and source files
	chgrp -R admin /Library/Caches/Homebrew